I got it. It's really good. I got a 24/7 4700Mhz overclock. 4.7 on the Asrock was hardly bootable.

So, first move when I got it was to install Windows 8. Sadly, I got a bluescreen at the same point. Again, no luck. Even with a friend's dvd. Now we know it wasn't the motherboard. Windows 7 install just fine afterwards.

Any other thoughts? What else is there? The cpu? How exactly can anything but the motherboard prevent Windows from installing?

I actually didn't care. The i7 on Windows 7 worked fine at first. Last three months were unbearable. SSL errors, BSODs, weird artifacts on screen, audio issues. I don't even remember all of them. My initial thought was that if i installed Windows 8 all these would resolve. The problem was the CPU though. I don't want to return to 7 now. Windows 8 doesn't bother me at all. My computer, even with a low end dual core celeron inside, works perfectly fine now.